Hungarian Christmas chocolate overview
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Santa Claus (Mikulás) figures made of chocolate are cheaper now, Hungarians eat about 8 million of them. Wrapped candy is less popular, still Hungarians spend 6 billion HUF on it. Hvg.hu’s small chocolate overview, with big numbers.
Domestic confectionery market distribution approaches 180 billion HUF per year. Biscuits, chocolate bars and tablets of chocolate make up the biggest part with over 25 billion HUF each, waffles, chips, desserts and candies reach a turnover of about 20 billion HUF separately.
Sándor Sánta, president of the Association of Hungarian Confectionery Manufacturers, told MTI that this year’s sales will exceed that of last year’s with a few per cents, regarding both quantity and value. Last year, 400 tons of chocolate Santa Claus figures were sold during the holidays.
Three-fourth of the people buy chocolate figures for St. Nicholas’s day (6th of December), 5 pieces on average.
Figures of medium size are the most sought for, and the largest ones sell the worst. The most important aspect when shopping is that the product is made of real chocolate, the second is flavouring, the third is price, the importance of the rest – size, brand, wrapping – is rather balanced.
According to the data, the income in the scrutinised five years (until 2015) grew by 30%, the income from export was 53%, the latter is primarily the result of companies being a hundred per cent foreign property. The number of enterprises in the confectionery industry increased by more than 20% due to the growth of the number of micro-enterprises by 2015. In 2011, the sector recorded 147 such enterprises, in 2015 their number exceeded 200. At the same time, the number of employees increased by more than 17%, due to medium and large companies.
Sándor Sánta highlighted that Hungarian and foreign manufacturers can be separated in only a few cases, since there are many international companies that have a factory in Hungary, where they produce confectionery from Hungarian materials, with Hungarian workforce, and, in many cases, re-emerging old Hungarian brands.